Understanding ISIS and forming policy

Add to your list(s) Download to your calendar using vCal

• Lydia Wilson, Oxford
• Tuesday 24 May 2016, 17:00-18:45
• Seminar room, Sociology Department, Free School Lane .

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Pierre Bocquillon.

This talk has been canceled/deleted

Abstract

This talk will explore the role of the “expert” in the debates in the West on Syria, Iraq and ISIS . The understanding of the situation in the Middle East is disappointingly low in the public debates, including in Parliament (seen in, for example, the 9 hour debate on taking action in Syria against ISIS , and the positioning speeches by politicians), journalism, academia and by public intellectuals. There are self-appointed and establishment-sanctioned “experts” supporting the existing ideological programme of Government – as ever – and these figures and their work, though the subject of fierce debate amongst academics, remain unexamined in the public sphere, the only place which could influence policy. The policy realities, such as David Cameron’s insistence that foreign policy has nothing to do with radicalisation, are stark but they are not always immune to change, although the resistance of politicians to changing the accepted narratives can lead to despair. In engaging with policy makers, journalists, think tanks, academic and other sectors, I have seen the overwhelming reasons to be pessimistic about changing policy but also the chinks in the armour which we must take advantage of if policy is ever to be changed for the better.

Bio

Lydia Wilson is a research fellow at the Centre for the Resolution of Intractable Conflict, University of Oxford; a visiting scholar at the Faculty of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Cambridge; a visiting fellow at the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies at the Graduate Center, City University New York; and a senior research fellow and field director at Artis International. Her work takes her to the Middle East regularly for fieldwork drawing on the disciplines of both anthropology and psychology. She edits the Cambridge Literary Review.

This talk is part of the Critical Theory and Practice Seminar series.

This talk is included in these lists:

This talk is not included in any other list

Note that ex-directory lists are not shown.